Along the shores of Puerto Marqués beach in Mexico is a spectacle of bright blues, and they illuminate the coast in a way that’s oddly eerie and beautiful all at once.

But these lights aren’t magic. At least, not the Disney-kind of magic

With quarantine forcing us to stay in our homes, there are no large gatherings of people here to distract from the spectacle. The lights glow in the night, and the ones making them don’t care about the lack of audience.

The lights are, of course, the glows of plankton in the water. The magic that makes it possible isn’t magic at all. It’s an adaptation that many organisms can do – bioluminescence. Some of you science-savvy folks might have heard the term before.

Plankton aren’t the only ones that can make these pretty lights. A good number of fish and arthropods can perform bioluminescence too, with the purposes ranging from communication to luring prey.

What is bioluminescence exactly?

It’s when an organism (for any number of evolutionary reasons) produces its own light through a chemical reaction. In fact, bioluminescence is an example of another phenomenon : chemiluminescence. Light produced through a different chemical reaction than how you would typically produce light.

This is different from combustion, which also uses chemical reactions to produce light

Bioluminescence is achieved with an enzyme called luciferase and some photoproteins (which are a special kind of protein-based enzymes that these animals have). They interact (or catalyze) with each other and the surrounding oxygen, and voila, you get the pretty glow.

So why are combustion and chemiluminescence in two different categories?

In short, an easy way to explain it is like this : Combustion generates heat, chemiluminescence doesn’t.

Bioluminescence isn’t that unusual either. It just seems that way to us land-lovers. Indeed, one study found that a staggering 76% of observed marine species in the ocean were bioluminescent.

If that seems like a surprisingly large number, it’s worth mentioning that things like small invertebrates and fish make up most of that

It might not seem like it, but much of the ocean’s life is made up of those funny, quirky invertebrates like cephalopods and jellyfish. There’s way more of them than there are sharks, whales or anything else. Of course, they’re hard to see and live in places we can’t exactly inspect that easily.

What other sorts of critters in the deep sea are bioluminescent, though?

We already know about the plankton and anglerfish (a.k.a the toothy danger fish with the lure on its head, which you may remember from Finding Nemo). What about the other cast of characters that light up the deep sea with their spectacular, natural lights?

You would not believe a wish, if ten million glowing fish, lit up the sea as you fell asleep

Some other animals with bioluminescence that you should know about include the beautiful Firefly squid (Watasenia scintillans), a small 3-inch long squid from the oceans of Japan. The Firefly squid uses organs called photophores, which are tiny organs spaced all along its body, to produce its glow.

When the squid makes them glow, they look almost like tiny Christmas lights. And they’re every bit as beautiful as Christmas lights

The pretty lights don’t end there. Besides the adorable Firefly squid, a few more bioluminescent animals include the deep sea shrimp (Aacanthephyra purpurea), Dragonfishes like the Black dragonfish (Idiacanthus atlanticus) and ophiuroids, which are better known as brittle stars.

Likewise, a lot plankton and fungi are bioluminescent. Like in Puerto Marqués, you might catch a lot of them glowing near the beaches if you’re lucky to see it. Probably the most famous example of bioluminescence are fireflies (Lampyridae), also known as lightning bugs as Owl City reminded us.

Granted, not all of these animals are exactly “pretty” by most standards. In particular, the Black dragonfish looks uncannily like the Alien.

The Mexican beach isn’t the only place where you might catch something like this happening

The Firefly squid we met earlier will sometimes gather in large numbers on Japanese shores and do the same thing.

Furthermore, it’s really important to know that a lot of animals will use their bioluminescence when they feel agitated or threatened

In particular, the ones that gather in big numbers like jellies and plankton. So before you go out trying to get some of them to give you a pretty lights show to watch, maybe stop and think if you really want to scare a bunch of animals just for your entertainment.

In fact, this is why many people were annoyed when some people dove into the phytoplankton lights show at Puerto Marqués and swam. This probably agitated a lot of the plankton, all for one person to have a few seconds of reckless enjoyment.

But nevertheless, the natural world is endlessly beautiful. The more we can appreciate and protect it, the better

Also, you don’t need to go to the beach or diving in the deep sea to see bioluminescence in action. A lot of bioluminescent insects and fungi can dazzle the outdoors at nighttime if you know where to look.

For instance, if you live in North America, you might be able to see the common firefly species Photinus pyralis lighting up the night. We doubt you could get ten thousand of them to hug you, though.

Besides this one, there’s also the glowing fungus Panellus stipticus.

This hopefully doesn’t need to be said, but don’t try eating it

Most importantly, the world of bioluminescence isn’t just all pretty lights on the surface. These organisms evolved their dazzling lights for survival

Whether that’s by communicating, alerting, or attracting prey.

It’s remarkably spectacular, whatever the case may be. Even more so, learning about a world outside of business, humans and money is always a great way to spend your time. After all, we don’t own the earth. We’re just part of it.

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Source: [LadBible, Wikipedia, Journal of Nature]